CHAPTER I
Introduction
A few years ago two dwarfs or Pygmies from the trackless forests of Uganda were bold enough to allow themselves to be brought to London, where they were exhibited and photographed. Unfortunately these little people had no one who could interpret their language, or what a wonderful story they might have told concerning life in an equatorial forest, where the foliage is in places so dense as to shut out the powerful glare of a tropical sun.
Many years ago these dwarfs were known to the highly civilised inhabitants of Ancient Egypt, and as early as 3000 B.C. the leaders of expeditions into the Sudan were charged by the Pharaohs of Egypt to return with gold dust, ivory, ornamental woods, and leopard skins; but above all these forms of wealth King Pepy II. desired a Pygmy “alive and well.”
These tiny folk, whose height is rarely more than four feet nine inches, live the simple life of hunters, almost devoid of clothing, possessing neither basket-work nor pottery, and armed only with flint-tipped spears and small poisoned arrows. Of agriculture they have no knowledge, for their time is wholly occupied by the dangerous pursuit of large and small game.
What a sharp contrast to these pygmies are the giant tribes of the Upper Nile, where the Shilluks are usually six feet four inches in height, and a man of only six feet would be regarded as short!
Many centuries ago, but at what time in the world’s history it is impossible to say, a tall, dark-skinned people named Hamites entered Africa from the direction of Arabia, and so fierce were these invaders that they were able to push before them the negroes, who retreated south and west. These fighting Hamites are now represented by the Somali, Danakil, and Galla who inhabit the “Horn of Africa,” where they subsist chiefly by cattle rearing; that is to say, they are a pastoral people, who move from one well and piece of grass land to another, driving before them large herds of sheep, goats, camels, and perhaps a few horses.
Of course the Hamites mixed with the true negroes to some extent, so forming the great Bantu race which inhabits most of our Uganda Protectorate. The dreaded Masai of British East Africa are probably a cross between the Negro and the Galla. Arab tribes have for centuries wandered through East Africa as traders and slave raiders, so we have to consider a very mixed people.
What a variety of country, too, in the British territories called the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Uganda, and British East Africa!
Woman crushing Grain on a Concave Stone with an Oval Stone Roller.